Sophie Gibbs

Catch Sophie on DO Radio: Where To Next with Mike Warwick on DO Radio 12th - 18th October 2026.

Sophie is a London-based theatre practitioner turned youth media-maker. Her work rests on a simple idea: meet young people on a level, listen to them, be real, and remarkable things follow.

After ten years running drama workshops in schools across the UK, she reached her turning point during a Year 9 workshop at a school on the outskirts of London. A conversation she wasn't allowed to have fell like dominoes into misogyny, homophobia and racism, until one boy stood up for a classmate who was being bullied.

Moved and overwhelmed, she ended up crying in the corridor while stretched teachers hurried past. She came away sure that the anger she'd seen wasn't badness. It was what young people sound like when no one has ever really listened to them.

What followed was a workshop company, and then a moment in her garden when a whole ten-year vision arrived at once. The very next day Sophie pitched the idea to a former BAFTA young presenter, and he answered "the time is now."

That was the start of Everybody Has a Story. Sophie taught herself to produce, direct, film and edit from scratch, and within a year she had built a youth-led platform across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Its young presenters stop strangers in the street and sit down with positive role models.

The team is now teengagers Jeriah, Myla, Sammy and Jojo, and they've collaborated with Football Beyond Borders and the youth club Mentivity.

Underneath it all is Sophie's belief that social media, like teenagers, gets an unfairly bad press. She doesn't want to leave young people's feeds to outrage and the manosphere.

Instead, she wants to "tip the balance" by filling the algorithm with conversations across generations, role models across genders, and hope. Then she wants to take that connection offline, into live events, breakout sessions with schools and youth clubs, and mentoring.

For her, positivity doesn't mean ignoring what's hard. It means choosing what to amplify, one small action at a time.

Do Radio Show Notes

In conversation with Mike, on a walk through drought-parched Hyde Park towards Marble Arch, Sophie traces the road from that school corridor to a growing team of young presenters.

Along the way they talk about exam pressure and the "relational economy," the men crying on Love Island, and the trick of typing "ocean" into your explore feed.

She also explains why the future isn't something to hand to young people to fix, but something to build alongside them.